Azzurri cuts debts with new bank deal

AZZURRI Communications has signed a new financing deal which sees its debts cut by from £103m to £25m and a £3m investment secured into its Cloud-based telecoms services.

The company’s lending banks have reduced its interest bearing debt by more than 75%, in a refi nancing deal which Azzurri said showed the banks’ confidence in the business. The deal also extends the maturity on the debt by two and half years to December 2016.

Speaking to Mobile, CEO Vim Vithaldas said: ‘Our funding position is now truly stabilized and fi xed once and for all with our existing debts extended until 2016 and our old debts amended to £25m with £78m of debts written off. So we now have the right sized balance sheet which brings us in line with our competitors and £3m to invest in our proposition, which is a real vote of confidence in the company. I am delighted by the outcome.’

This is the second refi nancing Azzurri has undergone since 2011 when its aggressive buy and build strategy saw it buy up 11 companies in four years, resulting in debts of over £115m. The bank refinancing saw ownership switch from private equity firm Silverfleet to a consortium of seven banks and a management restructuring instigated, which saw the appointment of Vithaldas.

The £3m investment from this latest refinancing will go into new cloudbasedtelecoms services, to support its ICON (Intelligent Cloud Optimised Network) platform. It will see Azzurri launch a multi-tenanted hosted telephony platform in January next year with capacity for 20,000 users.